Schröder jeered by Berlin Wall protesters

By Toby Helm in Berlin

12:01AM BST 14 Aug 2001

CHANCELLOR Gerhard Schröder was booed during ceremonies to mark the 40th anniversary of the Berlin Wall yesterday as anger flared at the prospect of his party joining former Communists in the German capital's city government.

On what was intended to be a quiet, mournful occasion, flags flew at half mast in memory of an estimated 250 people killed on or near the wall during the cold war.

But the sombre mood was punctuated by furious protests from those who suffered under the former East German regime.

Protesters also trampled on and removed wreaths that had been placed on a stretch of the wall by the reformed communists - the Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS) - and Mr Schröder's ruling Social Democrats (SPD). One man was led away by police.

Mr Schröder marked the anniversary by laying a wreath at a memorial on Bernauer Strasse, which became famous in the months after the barrier was built in 1961 as people jumped from windows of flats on its eastern side into the street, which lay in the West. Eventually, the windows were boarded up and the buildings torn down.

"It's a disgrace," said Gustav Rust, 61, who wore a prison uniform and handcuffs to show he had spent nine years in East German prisons. "It's unbelievable that the SPD are going to join forces with the communists. They're forgetting the suffering of all their comrades."

Klaus-Peter Eich, 60, who has been in a wheelchair since he was shot while trying to escape from East to West Berlin two months after the city was divided, said the PDS should apologise for the wall and the killings.

"It would be a mockery to form a coalition with such a party before they have acknowledged their guilt," he said. "As a wall victim, I have the historical duty to remind people about the crimes of the former East German Communist party."

The Berlin Wall came into being on August 13, 1961, when East German soldiers placed barbed wire along the border to try to stop an exodus to the West.

Overnight, families and friends were separated by a barrier that was to remain for 28 years. The wall divided 192 Berlin streets. The city government says it will pass a resolution this week declaring the few remaining sections of the wall historical monuments.

Yesterday's ceremonies assumed more significance than previous anniversaries because of the election, due in October, for a new city state government.

Controversy has stemmed from a likely SPD-PDS link-up. Opponents of such a coalition insist that the PDS should not be allowed to be part of a government unless and until it apologises for killings on the wall and for building the barrier in the first place.

The party, which now tries to reconcile a modernist wing with diehard loyalists to the old order, won 40 per cent of the vote in Berlin at the last city election in 1999.

Aware that it might alienate much of its core support among older east Berliners by apologising for the wall - many still maintain it was necessary to preserve peace and the Communist experiment - the PDS has refused to do so.

The party leadership recently declared that the wall was "not justifiable" in any respect, but this was not enough for its critics. Gregor Gysi, former PDS leader and its candidate for Berlin mayor, says PDS members do not bear individual guilt and that an apology would be "too cheap, too self-righteous and not credible".

The SPD has joined in calls for an apology, but has not ruled out a coalition with the PDS.

Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor who oversaw German reunification in 1990, condemned the PDS yesterday. "The bulk of PDS members and important functionaries have not learnt anything from history," he told Bild newspaper. "And now they do not have the courage to say it was a wall of disgrace."